Seventeen years ago today Margaret Thatcher failed to win the first leadership ballot by enough votes

With apologies to our younger readers but can you believe it?  It's been seventeen years since Margaret Thatcher won the support of 204 MPs and Michael Heseltine won 152 votes.  In many ways it seems like yesterday to me.  The 52 majority wasn't enough to end the attempt to oust her and a few days later Margaret Thatcher resigned.  Watch the BBC News report her resignation here but the video below records John Sergeant's reflections on the Iron Lady - including that famous Paris scene where she reacts to her failure to win the first ballot decisively.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

One of the best things about Margaret Thatcher was that she was never deferential to media hacks. She understood that their role was to listen to her and not vice-versa. I can actually remember seeing this clip and it is extraordinary how we have memories like that stored away and can recall them in an instant. I also remember that when Mr Major become prime minister my girlfriend had one of her friends around at our home and this poor young woman, with all the honesty in the world turned around and said "Who's that, I've never heard of him!"

[ak23566]

A black day which left a stain on the soul of the Conservative Party. I still have to fight back the tears when I think of how our Parliamentary Party treated her.

I was just old enough to play an active role in the 1979 election. The 80's were the most wonderful period in our recent history. I regard myself as fortunate to have had a ringside seat to watch history unfold, as Thatcher and Reagan strode the world stage and reformed not only the conservative agenda but created a new order.

Today, a generation, 4 general elections and 3 Prime Ministers later, she still dominates the British political stage - with pygmies like Brown desperate to bask in her reflected glory.

The Conservative Party, and Great Britain, were fortunate to find such a leader when we needed her most. She was better than the whole damned lot of them.

[Treacle]

ak23566

Amen to that

[david]

Or did Cranley Onslow, lose some of her votes?

[Votedave]

Her Custer-like last stand performance in the House of Commons at Neil Kinnock's no confidence debate two days later was amazing and united the Conservative Party. A perverse but remarkable achievement.

[bw]

What a glorious day that was! Good old Heseltine!

[Dean]

A tragic day and we're still suffering from the consequences.

A fair few of her assassins, having ruined the Tory Party, ended up in different parties. Nicholson, Temple-Morris, Jackson . . .

[Mr Angry]

All political careers end in tears.

[Yet Another Anon]

Her Custer-like last stand performance in the House of Commons at Neil Kinnock's no confidence debate two days later was amazing and united the Conservative Party.
The confidence motion was never likely to succeed, Neil Kinnock made a total fool of himself calling it when it was obvious that MPs were not going to vote against their own party in a confidence motion shortly before a leadership election where they would still have a chance to influence who became party leader, even where MPs do that it is usually either when they intend to switch party anyway, or where it isn't a confidence motion as such, but rather something the government has announced is a matter of confidence where the MPs feel that it is too important to vote with the government as happened with The Maastricht Treaty.

General Custer on the other hand carelessly led his troops into an ambush where their chances of victory were nil - on that occassion he was negligent and the Native American forces he was fighting against won a shrewd tactical victory.

Margaret Thatcher might have won a second round against Michael Hestletine, the Conservative Government by late 1990 had passed it's peak of unpopularity and was starting to recover. I think she would have come over far better in The Gulf War than John Major and had more gravitas - she could have whipped up a fervour of patriotism and swept to a 4th victory.

She might even as PM have withdrawn the UK from the EU, certainly she would have not persisted with the doomed attempt to keep Sterling in the ERM.

All political careers end in tears.
When Harold Wilson stood down as PM it was in a situation in which he had regained a lot of the popularity he had had in the mid 1960s, there was no pressure on him to go and it caused great surprise.

Eisenhower left office as one of the most popular US Presidents in history, Franklin D. Roosevelt died but almost certainly would have stood and won again if he had still been alive by the following Presidential elections. President De Gaulle remains a giant of French history, as does Francois Mitterand although to a lesser extent.

It varies how it ends, and depends on what the objectives of the politician were and how they accept how things ended.